I just watched Impact and a couple of thoughts came to mind: 1. Why isn't there a legit competitor for the WWE? ( Before moving to WI in July, I lived on the East Coast. I was a huge ECW fan. They were a great alternative. Innovative matches and good storylines.)

2. With a decent roster, why isn't TNA taking off?

3. Where will the next big promotion/federation begin?

It just seems like a lull in wrestling. Nothing eyecatching. Am I wrong?

Originally posted by sonicslapshotI just watched Impact and a couple of thoughts came to mind:

"1. Why isn't there a legit competitor for the WWE? ( Before moving to WI in July, I lived on the East Coast. I was a huge ECW fan. They were a great alternative. Innovative matches and good storylines.)"

Despite a history of strong cable ratings, TV land is run by their own "old boys" who have a very low opinion of wrestling and don't want it on their station. Without a strong national TV presence and a big money backer, there cannot be competition.

"2. With a decent roster, why isn't TNA taking off?"

A failed weekly PPV concept, inconsistent booking, and a poor national timeslot.

"3. Where will the next big promotion/federation begin?"

You never know but it would take a small miracle at this point for there to be WWE competition.

In November, TNA is ditching the Wednesday night PPV's and going to a one big PPV a month format using the Impact show to build to it. A better timeslot should be on the horizon. I still don't see FOX Sports Net to be a strong enough national presence to make them any sort of competition but they'll be a more viable alternative for the casual fan.

I think that it's pretty safe to say that no competitor of WWE will ever be able to utter the phrase, "....and here is your World Heavyweight Champion, the great Jeff Jarrett." That is why TNA is a non factor. Well that and other factors.

TNA hasn't taken off due to shoddy booking and lack of drawing cards. Their guys at their best may be able to avoid putting on poor shows match quality-wise, but you're not going to make any money with a bunch of castaways and relative unknowns putting on mediocre-at-best matches with the occasional ***+ effort from the X guys thrown in there.

TNA has no star power. I'm sure if this were Florida circa 1982 they'd be doing quite well, but no one wants to see Dusty Rhodes anymore. Jeff Jarrett and Vince Russo were the focus when WCW died. AJ Styles and Ron Killings may be very entertaining, but in order to get people to watch through two hours of David Young, Glenn Gilberti, 3 Live Kru, and Goldylocks, you'd better be running Steve Austin and The Rock out there at the end or forget it.

And even if they did get a roster, they can't book worth a damn. The people in charge clearly have no idea of what people want to see. Jeff Jarrett doesn't get great heel heat, he gets X-Pac heat. If anyone cared about Vince Russo, WCW would still be going strong.

It's going to take one hell of a lot for competition to start up that can run with WWE. They'll need the financial backing to assemble a knockout roster, which will be difficult given the relative monopoly WWE has had in the US for the past three years. They'll need a great TV slot on a network with coverage. Taking a mid-afternoon slot on a marginal network wont' do it. How well did afternoons on ESPN work for AWA at the end?

Lastly, they'll need exceptional writing. Assuming they won't get that blowaway roster, you're going to have to have miracle workers behind the scenes if you're going to create compelling episodic television with average wrestlers. WWE can get away with lackluster storylines now because they've got a long established, entrenched following. If you took the stories from Raw or Smackdown at any point in the last three years and applied them to a new show with new guys, it'd bomb.

Or, to answer the question of whether we'll see competition any time soon more succinctly...no.

The start-up costs of a wrestling promotion in this day and age is just astronomical. ECW was not a competitor to the WWF, not even close. It was an alternative, but it was never a pimple on McMahon's ass. Especially not after he mined their attitude and did it better.

I seriously doubt that, even if TNA had been booked immaculately, it would have been any more successful than it is today. For all the tongue-wagging over some of their vastly overrated performers, like AJ Styles for example, there are still people in WWE like Benoit, Angle, Guerrero, even a passed-his-prime Shawn Michaels, whose work, all round, no one in TNA can touch.

Also, you've got to take production values into account. Maybe it doesn't make much of a difference in theory, but I was just watching the Flair DVD and it became easy for me to see why WWF was more popular than the NWA. Some of the biggest matches of Flair's NWA run look like archival footage of Antonino Rocca or Ernie Ladd, the footage looks about 30 years older than it is. Then, when Flair goes to the WWF in 1991, the arenas look absolutely enormous even though anyone who knows their wrestling history knows it wasn't exactly sell-out city during this period. WWE will always look like it costs millions of bucks to make, probably because it does, but you can't put some barn-dance against them and expect to look like you're on their level.

I was at Smackdown this week, and I swear, the arena was about 1/4 full, yet, when I watched it on TV they made it look like a fair amount of people were there. Now, granted, TNA has even less people to work with, but there are just so many levels on which WWE is completely superior to any competitor in wrestling history, and I think production values are at the very top of that list.